Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a vocabulary webinar by Maria Elena Arguelles. She proposed a simple scaffolding for introducing new vocabulary to students and I decided to use it this week, while adding a few of my own engagement strategies.

(The photo above, taken by Paul Baron, is of flexible bamboo scaffolding - reminding me that flexibility is key in a mixed-ability classroom!)

The word for the day, taken from Sprenger's list of critical common core verbs, was "organize." (See post from 8/29 for more info.) Here are the steps we took:

Activator:

I searched through my prop bag looking for something and finally just dumped the contents out so students could see how unorganized it was. This grabbed their attention and helped them make connections.

I introduced the word, the definition, and some synonyms.

I used the word correctly in a few sentences, having students respond with thumbs up/down.

I interspersed sentences that used the word incorrectly, having students respond with thumbs up/down.

I provided a sentence stem for students to complete with a partner - "I will organize ______________ so that ____________________________. We shared these as a whole group.

I had students individually complete the sentence stem.

On the following day, students worked individually with Educreations on the iPad to write a sentence, illustrate and record themselves. My co-teacher and I used their recordings as a formative assessment.

I liked this structure - it was simple, straightforward and provided the support needed by many of our students. Of course, because vocabulary acquisition is an ongoing process, we will be implementing a variety of other vocabulary activities during the semester to reinforce this instruction.